Paranoiac thinking and functioning have a certain specificity within the process of adolescence. It would be an ordinary or pathological limit imposed upon their creativity, a limit inscribed in the pubertary pictogramme which is carried out not with the Other but against the Other. The basis upon which adolescent creation is carried out is the pubertary state of illusion in the Winnicottian sense in which the « Infantile Ego » and the « pubertary non-yet-an-ego » are in a paradoxical relation. Paranoia would be the effect of a paradoxical injunction coming from the subject and from his environment, attacking the fundamental state of illusion. Starting from this thesis, the features of adolescent paranoia are considered: causalist thinking, the pairing of disavowal-projection, the accusation of the genital body.
The last chapter seeks out possible corollaries of this thesis for adolescent treatment, in order to get around the obstacle of paranoia: working as much as possible in the register of associative thought, refusal of the inside-outside opposition in favour of a mutual relation in the session, which is treated as an observatory for external events regularly recounted by the adolescent, the importance of counter-transference in provoking positive transference.

Adolescence, 2008, T. 26, n°3, pp. 571-596.